Top E-Commerce Platform Trends To Watch Out For In 2017

eCommerce Platform- A Right Tool For a Right Kind of Job:

In my 6 years of working with the eCommerce platforms, I have been asked this same question on different occasions - "What is the best eCommerce platform in the market today?"

Well, I really found this question impossible to answer by then and same goes for even today. An eCommerce platform is never the best or the worst. It's just a right tool for a right kind of job or a wrong tool for a right kind of job.

Is Popularity a Factor in Deciding The Best Platform?

People would say, I would launch my site on Magento Enterprise as it is one of the top eCommerce platforms according to the surveys.

Well, I am a huge supporter of taking the actions backed on facts and data, and these surveys provide some solid data. However, I prefer to differ a bit when it comes to choosing an eCommerce platform.

Considering the usage statistics and popularity is not a right scale to decide the best platform for your kind of job. Each eCommerce platform today, has it's own pros and cons. They are designed to simply fit a special class of requirements. For example, though both Magento community and Magento Enterprise edition are eCommerce platforms, it's not wise to compare the one with other on popularity basis.

What Magento community edition provides suits a particular section of business requirements and same goes to the enterprise edition. Similarly, Shopify suits another class of business requirement.

So, it's not the popularity of the platform that decides who is best. It's your requirement and the ability of the platform to seamlessly fulfill it which decides the best choice for you.

Here in this article, I am going to analyze the latest trends about eCommerce platform trends till June 2017. We would also implicate through these data to find out which class of eCommerce requirements is trending most in the market today.

E-Commerce Itself Is A Trend

The internet has grown drastically over the past half-decade, and is now one of the maturest industry internet has ever produced. There are still innovations and inventions going on, but the kind of tempo eCommerce shows is hard enough to ignore.

Especially when you are an eCommerce entrepreneur with a vision in your mind, you don't want to compromise with your business requirements. That's where choosing a right eCommerce platform becomes so crucial to survive the rash of competition and changing face of the eCommerce industry.

The eCommerce platforms which I am going to mention in this article mainly include:

- WooCommerce

- Magento Community Edition

- Shopify

- Magento EnterpriseEdition

There are some other important platforms too, but the kind of fall these platforms have received in the past 2 years is dramatic. We will also look at them.

Here is the comparison of the eCommerce platform trends that have changed over the last year. This data is based on the analysis of the top million sites on the internet by BuiltWith.

MAY 2016

MAY 2017

JUNE 2017

Analysis

The above pie charts present a detailed comparison of the eCommerce platform usage trends over the last year. It’s easy to draw some implications from these pie charts.

1. The Total Share

Until the May 2016, the four platform Magento community, WooCommerce, Magento Enterprise, and Shopify were being run on 43% of the top million eCommerce sites in 2016.

However, this percentage rose to 49% by May 2017. The 6% percent increase was contributed greatly by a decent increase in the usage of Shopify and WooCommerce.

WooCommerce rose from 21% in May 2016 to 24% in May 2017. While Shopify witnessed a very well increase 6% to 10% in 2017.

Surprisingly, the share of Magento community edition witnessed a drop to 1% while the Magento Enterprise edition was stagnant to 2 % of the share.

Implications

The growth of Shopify as an eCommerce platform clearly indicates that entrepreneurs have been more inclined to the cloud-based hosted solutions. Moreover, since Shopify is not designed to handle the giant setups, it seems that more startups have been made in the smaller and niche-based business segment.

According to a data showing 1% decline in the usage of Magento community, it can be said that self-hosted solutions are possibly too tricky for these small business owners. And for those who wish to use the self-hosted platforms, WooCommerce is their first choice. Despite, Magento community edition can fulfill every requirement, WooCommerce is still the more popular choice.

I have read these lines in one of the articles about giving too many choices to the eCommerce customers- "Less is more". The article said that " giving too many choices to the customers always trigger the "paradox of choice"". Perhaps Magento is falling into this paradox of choice where it has everything one needs but also has many things extra that small businesses do not require at all.

And in this situation, WooCommerce comes out as a simpler and easier solution with few yet necessary offerings. That's where small business setups attract to it instead of using a more complicated solution.

2. Shifting The Platforms

Though Magento faced a slight decline among the top million eCommerce sites, the overall internet stats say that there has been an increase in its usage either. With Magento, the other three platforms have also become more popular.

Business running on the proprietary and less popular eCommerce platforms have shrunk to a great extent. From 45% to 39% to be exact.

Implications

Not just the startups but the older businesses are also shifting their ways to the  WooCommerce, Magento, and Shopify. Depending on the requirements, all the three platforms can serve from small to giant business requirements, and this is where they are attracting the site owners to change from their less popular platforms.

But it's not just the popularity that is causing this shift but the actual reason behind this popularity is the real cause:

• You can find a Magento extension, Shopify App, WooCommerce plugin more easily that any other eCommerce platform in the market.
• You can find a Magento certificated developers, and experts on Shopify and WooCommerce more easily than any other eCommerce platform.
• The support for these platforms is competitively way better. Who doesn't know the Magento forum, Shopify Forums, WooCommerce forum, Magento Enterprise and Shopify dedicated support etc?
• The overall cost of setup, management, and maintenance on these three platforms is way less than what you would spend on proprietary platforms like Volusion, and Yahoo Store.

Google Trends Say A Similar Story

Even the GoogleTrends seems to agree with the above data. It tells a similar story on the popularity of the three platforms:

Shopify is being shown as the most promising platforms here, while WooCommerce is also not far behind. On the other hand, though Magento was far more popular than any of these platforms till 2015, after that a gradual decline can be easily noticed.

With the advent of could based (Shopify) or more focused (WooCommerce) platforms, the stand alone, self-hosted, and enterprise level (Magento) solutions are getting lesser attentions.

However, it doesn't mean Magento is any less popular. It's just that eCommerce startups today are more on niche-based and small-scale rather than on an enterprise level. These small business requirements are being fulfilled by the light-weight platforms itself, so why would one wish to spend more time, money and, effort on a comparatively better but complicated and costly solution.

An Honorable Mention- Prestashop

While we were looking at the stats from worldwide, we encountered an interesting stat from the European section. The home player PrestaShop is one of the most used eCommerce platforms in countries like France, Spain, Italy, and even in some Asian subcontinent.

This is the usage stat from France:

PrestaShop is one of the fastest growing eCommerce platforms in the European and some Asian sub-continent part. In France itself, 27% of the eCommerce sites run on PrestaShop platform which is almost the same as WooCommerce share in the same market.

Moreover, some Asian countries like India are growing as the top source of custom PrestaShop modules, themes, and templates after France. It's hard to resist how PrestaShop is growing in the eCommerce platform market and perhaps a promising entrant to the Worldwide eCommerce platform market.

Author Bio:                                                                                       

Ethan Roy, a technical content writer by Profession. With years of experience on various eCommerce platforms (Magento, PrestaShop, OpenCart, Shopify), he has a lot to share with the readers. Currently working as Technical Content Writer at Knowband .              

Solar Energy- A Fortune Changer Concept For Africa

Solar Energy- Why It Is Important for Countries?

Generally, solar panels and solar energy are less expensive as compared to most fuels. Also, solar energy is available and can be utilized on every place globally. Therefore, it is becoming one of the most preferable source of energy as compared to all other resources of energy. All these things make solar energy very futuristic source of energy. By this change, the fate of troubled countries will improve and it will make a big difference in making such countries grow in a better and faster way. One of such countries is Africa which has very good scope of improvement and growth.

Recently, the World Economic Forum said that solar and wind are now of the equal or less expensive than fossil fuel. In the months since, the change has gotten an expanding measure of press, particularly with the developing enthusiasm for Tesla's solar rooftop tiles, which has kicked off the officially sound American market for private sun oriented boards. Some of that press has included new advancements in Africa — and keeping in mind that Tesla's rooftop tiles are energizing, they're essentially the tech required to stay aware of Africa's developments.

Solar Energy Based Airports

South Africa gets more than 2,500 hours of sunlight a year. The nation additionally has air terminals that are situated amidst no place. In the previous couple of months, the Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) chosen to take advantage of these two circumstances, and revealed three sun based fueled airplane terminals the nation over, with three more to be uncovered by 2018.

As of now, sun powered power contributes about portion of the three air terminals' energy necessity, with the other half drawn from the network — yet the objective is to have airplane terminals the nation over producing 100 percent of their own energy. By doing this, the ACSA will accomplish its long haul objective of carbon impartiality by 2025.

Sun based Power for All: BBOXX

One of the greatest difficulties to updating Africa's innovation is making power accessible over the landmass. Christopher Baker-Brian, Mansoor Hamayun and Laurent Van Houcke, every single previous colleague concentrate electrical and hardware designing at Imperial College London, embarked to fix that issue. Their organization, BBOXX, gives sun based boards, a battery and long haul bolster for country buyers in Africa — just for about $100. Their objective? To illuminate the whole nation, giving every African the capacity to impart, work together and take an interest in the worldwide economy.

McDonald’s Advertisement Commits The SEO Faux Pas

McDonalds SEO Faux Pas: How Is It Started?

In the event that McDonald's needed to get the entire world discussing its promotion battle, the firm can surely number it an extraordinary achievement. Regardless of whether individuals are talking about it for the correct reasons, nonetheless, is another matter completely. 

About The Ad Promotion

The TV promotion comprises of the performing artist Mindy Kaling wearing a yellow dress against a maroon foundation, discussing "where Coke tastes so great". She recommends that watchers make a beeline for Google to scan for the place being referred to. Fifteen seconds of advert, and in spite of the fact that Coke and Google are both said, there is no expression of the place being referred to, in spite of the fact that the hues alone ought to prompt subliminal relationship with the McDonald's burger establishment. 

Why Is It Such a Violation of Norms?

Neglecting to specify the name of your image in a promotion crusade is absolutely shocking. It goes immovably contrary to what would be expected not to give a name check to the organization paying the promoting bill, especially when both Coca-Cola and Google are receiving the rewards of having their names said on prime-time TV.

Where the socially awkward act ends up plainly inexcusable, in any case, is the point at which the question about "where Coke tastes so great" is gone into Google. A ream of results raising articles mocking the advert's poor SEO systems streak up on the screen. McDonald's name is absolutely specified, however most likely not in the way that the promoting organization – We Are Unlimited – proposed when they thought up this crusade.

It's actual that SEO is a specific field, however whether you are searching out help with your SEO in Dublin or Derby, you would not nonsensically expect specialists, for example, http://www.rycomarketing.ie/to advance your own image, not those of organizations in totally unique enterprises. 

Is it a Major Error?

As indicated by Adweek, the battle has been deliberately intended to interest youngsters and youthful grown-ups, who get a kick out of the chance to reach their own determinations about items.

That might be valid, however most analysts concur that by neglecting to make to such an extent as a devoted point of arrival for the crusade, the organization has totally neglected to gain by its showcasing technique. This mistake has permitted the outcomes pages for the inquiry question postured in the advert to wind up captured by terrible press about McDonald's, which is unquestionably the exact opposite thing that the organization expected.

The Biggest Affiliate Marketing Trends in 2017

Affiliate Marketing in 2017

Though affiliate marketing is not the dominating force it once was, the industry is still worth billions of dollars and looks to grow considerably over the remainder of the year.

Whether you’ve already been making big bucks as an affiliate for years, or whether you’re considering making your own mark in the industry for the first time ever, you’ll want to know what the current marketing affiliate trends entail.

 

Cross Device Tracking is becoming more Important…

In 2017, we can switch between our smartphones, tablets and laptops several times throughout a single day. As such, the need for cross-device tracking is fast becoming essential.

As marketers we appreciate the importance of understanding customer trends and being able to tailor advertisement accordingly. Being able to track a consumer’s preferences online means being able to optimize their experience by showing only those ads which are relevant to their interests and demographic, thereby improving their experience while increasing the likelihood of sales.

Ideally, a customer will be able to go back to your site on any one of their other devices and see that their shopping cart is still full from last time. They shouldn’t get bombarded by ads they’ve already seen, and they should still be eligible for all the same special offers that were presented to them last time they visited.

But what happens when we lose track of our customer, interpreting them as a different visitor when they log onto a new device? This is a challenge many marketers and retailers are seeking to overcome. Features that allow customers to connect their Facebook as a form of log-in verification is just one of many ways marketers are keeping tabs, but this method might not be ideal for everyone.

No matter which solution you settle on, understanding the consumer journey by collecting accurate data is essential to understanding your customers – which in turn is essential for becoming a better marketer.

 

…which also means Cross-Device Compatibility is More Important

If your online store isn’t mobile compatible, then we’ve got some bad news for you. You’re missing out on some serious revenue. Going mobile has become one of the most important trends for affiliate marketers, as more and more purchases are made through apps.

Not convinced? In just six years, global mobile app revenues have risen from $8.32 billion dollars to $76.5 billion dollars – and that upward trend doesn’t look like it’s stopping anytime soon.

Increasing mobile conversions should be a top priority, which not only includes making your site mobile-friendly or creating an app – it could also extend to purchasing direct ads in popular apps relevant to your industry.

 

Keep an Eye out for Rising Affiliate Niches

So far in 2017, we’ve already seen certain marketing verticals receive a considerable boost due to a variety of factors. This section is especially useful for those who do not yet have a firmly established affiliate business, or are simply looking to focus on a new niche.

For example, one of the industries receiving more attention than usual is online gambling. Thanks to a surge of popularity in esports and fantasy football, more and more people are interested in placing bets online. The advent of virtual reality gaming, meanwhile, has increased interest in online poker sites that can offer virtual card room experiences.

Other increasingly profitable niches are found within the health industry (each new diet fad attracts millions of consumers). Whilst dieting is evergreen for marketers (it’s unlikely people are going to stop obsessing over weight anytime soon) the most popular weight loss methods are always changing.

 

Video Content is Winning Likes and Shares

We all know ‘Content is King’, but have you also noticed that content these days includes videos? Social media has made ite easy for marketers to post autoplay videos, whilst having also made it easier for people to discover interesting videos and share them with the click of a button.

Just like with any other content, videos that make us emotional, that shock us, that entertain us or inform us are likely to fare well. Incorporate this into your marketing strategy and you could well earn yourself some likes, shares, clicks and links – not to mention a growing audience!

 

Influences Are Still Influential

Yes, we know that reaching out to bloggers, YouTube personalities and prominent tweeters takes a lot of time and effort. It is, nonetheless, still extremely valuable for the most of us.

Reaching out to the right people and getting them to showcase our products  can give us positive associations, immense exposure and – of course – new customers.

The rising importance of platforms like Instagram to modern marketing has further established the fact that influential social media stars are…well, influential. Use that to your advantage.

 

In Conclusion

While the number of boxes we, as affiliate marketers, need to tick simply to stay ahead of game may seem ever-increasing and daunting – this only goes to show that affiliate marketing is growing as an industry. Taking a hard look at current marketing trends and adapting your efforts accordingly will pay off in the long run. This should be a year where you see your revenue soar – so get excited!

What is WannaCry Ransomware and Why Is It Assaulting Worldwide Computers?

WannaCry Ransomware:

The makers of this bit of ransomware are as yet obscure, yet "WannaCry" is their second endeavor at digital coercion. A prior form, named WeCry, was found back in February this year: it approached clients for 0.1 bitcoin (as of now worth $177, yet with a fluctuating quality) to open documents and projects. 

Image Courtesy: www.iotdanawa.com

How is the NSA attached into this assault?

When one client has unwittingly introduced this specific kind of ransomware all alone PC, it tries to spread to different PCs in a similar system. With a specific end goal to do as such, WannaCry utilizes a known powerlessness in the Windows working framework, hopping amongst PC and PC. This shortcoming was first uncovered to the world as a major aspect of a colossal hole of NSA hacking devices and known shortcomings by a mysterious gathering calling itself "Shadow Brokers" in April.

 

Was there any protection?

Yes. In a matter of seconds before the Shadow Brokers discharged their documents, Microsoft issued a fix for influenced variants of Windows, guaranteeing that the defenselessness couldn't be utilized to spread malware between completely refreshed renditions of its working framework. However, for some reasons, from the absence of assets to a longing to completely test new updates before pushing them out more generally, associations are frequently eased back to introduce such security reports on a wide scale.

 

Who are the Shadow Brokers? Is it true that they were behind this assault?

With regards to nearly everything else in the realm of cyberwarfare, attribution is dubious. In any case, it appears to be far-fetched that the Shadow Brokers were specifically required in the ransomware strike: rather, some shark engineer appears to have recognized the utility of the data in the spilled records, and refreshed their own product in like manner. Concerning the Shadow Brokers themselves, nobody truly knows, however fingers point towards Russian on-screen characters as likely guilty parties.

 

Will paying the payment truly open the documents?

Some of the time paying the payment will work, yet infrequently it won't. For the Cryptolocker ransomware that hit a couple of years prior, a few clients revealed that they truly got their information back in the wake of paying the payment, which was ordinarily around £300. Be that as it may, there's no assurance paying will work, in light of the fact that cybercriminals aren't precisely the most dependable gathering of individuals.

There are additionally an accumulation of infections that make a special effort to look like ransomware, for example, Cryptolocker, yet which won't hand back the information if casualties pay. Furthermore, there's the moral issue: paying the payoff supports more wrongdoing.

 

What else would I be able to do?

Once ransomware has scrambled your documents there's not a considerable measure you can do. On the off chance that you have a reinforcement of the documents you ought to have the capacity to reestablish them in the wake of cleaning the PC, yet in the event that not your records could be away for good.

Some gravely composed ransomware, be that as it may, has been itself hacked by security scientists, permitting recuperation of information. Be that as it may, such circumstances are uncommon, and tend not to apply on account of widescale expert hits like the WannaCry assault.

 

To what extent will this assault last?

Ransomware frequently has a short time span of usability. As against infection sellers cotton on to new forms of the malware, they can counteract contaminations starting and spreading, prompting designers endeavoring "Enormous detonation" presentations like the one as of now under way.

 

Will they escape with it?

Bitcoin, the installment medium through which the programmers are requesting installment, is hard to follow, yet not unthinkable, and the sheer size of the assault implies that law authorization in different nations will hope to check whether they can take after the cash back to the guilty parties.

 

Why is the NHS being focused on?

The NHS does not appear to have been particularly focused on, but rather the administration is not helped by its dependence on old, unsupported programming. Numerous NHS trusts still utilize Windows XP, a rendition of Microsoft's working framework that has not gotten openly accessible security refreshes for a large portion of 10 years, and even those which are running on fresher working frameworks are frequently sporadically kept up. For an assault which depends on utilizing an opening settled under three months back, only a slight oversight can be cataclysmic.

Assaults on medicinal services suppliers over the world are at an unequaled high as they contain significant private data, including social insurance records.

Ransomware Attacks Will Increase by Double in 2017- A Study

Image Courtesy: https://fightransomware.com

Ransomware assaults quadrupled in 2016 and will twofold again in 2017, as per a report issued by Beazley, a supplier of data breach response insurance.

As indicated by Beazley Breach Insights - January 2017, organizations are most at hazard subsequent to being hit with an IT framework solidify, toward the finish of money related quarters and amid heavy shopping periods.

Advance, the expanding refinement of the assaults, including consistently developing variations, empower the coders behind the attacks to overview arrange frameworks to pick the most basic advantages for secure and to build their payment requests in view of the estimation of records they encode.

In view of examination of about two thousand information breaks that Beazley's Breach Response division overseen in the interest of customers in 2016, the review confirmed that there were four fold the number of ransomware assaults in 2016 contrasted with the earlier year.

"The ease and effectiveness of these attacks portend an even larger increase in 2017 with Beazley projecting these attacks to double again in 2017," the study found.

As the quantity of assailants is just expanding, the organization said the unintended exposure of individual data – more often than not by means of messages or faxes sent to the wrong beneficiary – is "much more dangerous." Incidents of this sort expanded by about 33% of all breaks in 2016, up from 24 percent in 2015, the review uncovered.

The review additionally found that hacks and malware represented 40 percent of information ruptures at money related organizations in 2016, up from 27 percent in 2015. Here too the frequency of unintended divulgence, fundamentally inferable from misled messages, rose, ascending from a year ago's count by four percent – to 28 percent of ruptures in 2016 from 24 percent in 2015.

In the training area, the frequency of information ruptures attributable to hacks and malware bounced 10 percent – from 35 percent to 45 percent – with unintended revelations brought on 28 percent of breaks in 2016, up from 22 percent in 2015.

In the meantime, mistakes in the human services area drove rupture exposures, with misled faxes and messages or the despicable arrival of release papers representing 40 percent of breaks in 2016, up from 30 percent in 2015.

"The threat from ransomware is not only growing, but evolving to allow hackers to target vulnerable organizations and their most valuable data files and adjust ransom demands accordingly," Katherine Keefe, global head of BBR Services, said in a statement. "The sustained increase in these threats in 2016 indicates that even more organizations will be attacked in 2017 and need to have incident response plans in place before they get a ransomware demand."

Microsoft Build Conference 2017: The Scary Interlinked World Vision of Microsoft

Microsoft's Build Conference 2017: The Story Begins Here

Microsoft's Build Conference commenced yesterday at Seattle where CEO Satya Nadella propelled versatile applications for Azure cloud services for Android and iOS, a Visual Studio for Mac, clever chatbots for Cortana and Bing, Oracle-like Azure Cosmos database and opened up Cortana with Cortana aptitudes set. Since this is Microsoft's engineer gathering, there was no expectation of any equipment dispatches this time. Furthermore, despite the fact that there was nothing in it for purchasers, the Build gathering 2017 is an imperative historic point for Microsoft. It is the place Microsoft grasped computerization in working environments wholeheartedly and even persuaded individuals it's OK to end up slaves to machines.

On a brilliant and sunny Seattle morning, Nadella accumulated engineers into a dark space to discuss distributed computing and Microsoft's vision of a future where machines communicate with each other without much intercession from their human partner s . Microsoft as of now has the numbers to support its. 500 million dynamic Windows 10 gadgets on the planet. 100 million Office 365 clients. 140 million Cortana clients and more than 90 for every penny of Fortune 500 organizations relying upon Microsoft's Azure Cloud benefit. That is the scale the organization is working at and the organization will require all the bolster it can get from designers to keep it there.

There is additionally an issue of keeping the tragic conceivable outcomes of broad entrance of innovation from turning into a reality. Utilizing strict "1984" blurbs as props, Nadella cautioned the crowd about the outcomes of abusing innovation for observation, yet at the same time felt free to made declarations which could possibly enable governments and associations to dispatch a full-scale reconnaissance hardware over individuals. " I'm an unrepenting tech optimist, there's no question of that but I'm also grounded though that there are unintended consequences of technology. But I do believe that it's up to us (developers) to ensure that some of the more dystopia scenarios don't come true," Nadella said.

Among all the new things coming to Microsoft Windows, Cortana's new capacities are most likely the scariest. On the off chance that you are a worker in a major association, get ready to be micromanaged by AI. Microsoft demonstrated demos of associated cameras watching out for workers at a development site. The cameras are associated with the cloud, effectively checking exercises continuously, recognizing representatives and each and every machine o n the worksite. The AI will have the capacity to in a flash tell the supervisors through push notices if a worker is the place he shouldn't be or advise the experts around a representative abusing hardware.

Be that as it may, much the same as what occurred with the development of the H-bomb, the effect of innovation at last comes down to the decisions made by the person who employs it. The AI-driven associated future Microsoft imagined can without much of a stretch be utilized for harsh measures. 

Disregard taking a long lunch, or rearranging your Fantasy Premier League group at work on the grounds that a Microsoft's new reconnaissance tech will dependably be watching you and stray even a tiny bit out of your work zone and Microsoft will in a flash send a warning to the supervisor. Disregard whatever self-sufficiency you had in the working environment. At the holy place of a computerized world, independence is the principal give up made. The initial step to getting to be slaves to machines.

In yet another demo highlighting Cortana's new capacities , work-life adjust progresses toward becoming non-existent. Cortana will now be all over. It will never again be locked to tablets and desktops and telephones. It will be in your homes, your autos, in the working environment all over the place. Cortana will help you to remember a meeting at office when you're at home and when you will begin your auto, Cortana will disclose to you how late you will be , on account of movement and advise the supervisors about the deferral.

It is a major takeoff from the lives the eras before us has lived. One that goes at its own pace, driven and controlled by none other than kindred people. Next up will be the rule of the machines. Where accuracy is at the heart of everything. Also, it will undoubtedly bring about work environment productivity going up, nations thriving, exchange prospering and so forth - yet will it leave people cheerful?